


Our Little Lives

by littledust



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four scenes from after the revolution succeeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Little Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yallaintright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yallaintright/gifts).



> Thank you for your excellent prompt, dear recipient! Endless gratitude to F, G, and R, who cheered me through the entire writing process.

The revolution succeeds.

The people--the starving, sickened, and desperate people of Paris--raise barricade after barricade. Hands calloused by labor join hands calloused by the pen. Soldiers lay down their arms rather than slaughter their brethren. King and corrupt regime are cast out; there is talk of an election, of nominating representatives. _Liberté, égalité, fraternité_ is the phrase of the land once more. The people tend to their wounded and weep for their dead, but hope flowers in their hearts, like a tricolor rosette from a buttonhole.

And what of the children of the barricade, those present at the revolution's inception?

_1\. Combeferre_

Combeferre lends his voice to the politics of the new world when he can, but there is much to do in the hospitals. He saws off rotting limbs and tips drugs down the throats of the wounded until his hands are stained crimson; democracy, like any birth, is both painful and bloody. There are more sick than wounded, though, as the cholera took firm hold before revolution and nearly left their new republic no more than a dream. For cholera, Combeferre bleeds those healthy enough to survive the process, gives them laudanum until no more is left. His hand, when he lays one upon a sweat-soaked brow, leaves a streak of red. The patient's skin is pale, the blue of his veins visible.

"Red, blue, and white," Combeferre murmurs, and could laugh for it. He does, and the doctors tell him to go home and rest.

He goes home but does not rest. Instead Combeferre prepares a list of suggestions to pass on to Enjolras, suggestions that concern health care in a brave new world. _No soul should have to choose between bread and medicine,_ he writes, and the force of the thought is such that he presses his pen deep into the page.

Enjolras will see that his suggestions see the light, if not full fruition in their lifetimes.

_2\. Courfeyrac_

"It seems everyone is occupied with health these days," Courfeyrac sighs, settling into his usual chair. "People convalescing in hospital and at home; people tending to the convalescents. Perhaps I ought to try it myself."

"You've come to see Marius every day," Cosette says, some of the tiredness leaving her fresh young face at the absurdity of Courfeyrac's claims. "That surely counts as tending to the convalescents. I know he hears your voice in dreams." She casts a fond look at the bed, occupied by a slumbering Marius. "His color is better today. The doctor says he will wake soon."

"And what a face to greet him!" Courfeyrac effuses. "His dearest love and her father, the man who saved his life!"

"Well," said Jean Valjean, evidently feeling he must say something, before lapsing back into his customary silence. The man had no cause to look so sorrowful with his daughter's future husband on the mend, but in visiting Marius, Courfeyrac has grown used to the man's curious, gentle sadness.

Cosette blushes prettily, as was Courfeyrac's intention all along. "I shall have to read him so many newspapers! Can you believe there is so much news in the world?"

"I believe there is so much new in the world," Courfeyrac replies. "Our Marius will have to adjust his scope, but for the better."

In the bed, Marius stirs as if in response to his name.

_3\. Eponine_

"Then he's woken? He's alive?"

"Same as you and me," the gamin says, and holds out a hand. Eponine drops a coin into his outstretched palm and he runs off, doubtless to steal bread and pay for it only if he must. What will anyone's money be worth tomorrow anyway? No one knows what currency the new government will use, only that there's never enough money to go around no matter who's in charge.

"Marius alive," Eponine says. "God! I might sleep under a bridge tonight instead of casting myself off it. I thought his wound was a punishment for for my sins, but it seems he's found his way back to life's door. I live near death's door and my father's on the other side; he must have seen our faces and turned away. Good! Marius will live!"

The tree by the river cares nothing for her or her words, but Eponine has no one else to talk to. The men are free of the king; she is free of her father, and that makes the revolution worth something. With nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep, it's a strange sort of freedom, one that makes the bones show beneath the skin. It's more freedom than Eponine ever expected; certainly she imagined Marius taking her away, but never did she consider her idle daydreams an eventual reality.

"Marius will live," she whispers. The wind rustles the leaves on the tree; she presses her cheek against the bark. He will live, and soon she will die, and all's right with the world.

_4\. Enjolras_

It is not the new world that tempers him.

"Where are you going?" Courfeyrac asks when Enjolras adjourns a meeting without resolving a dispute about property ownership.

Combeferre, who had inquired about the pot of flowers on Enjolras's windowsill hours before, nods. "Tell them I say hello."

"Oh," Courfeyrac says, and bows his head. "From me as well. We went yesterday, but they'll like to hear from us again, I think."

The deaths of his friends are what tempers Enjolras, what softens him enough to shape this new world. Gone is the marble lover of liberty. Gone also is Jean Prouvaire, who would have brought flowers to his friends' graves and composed elegies in their honor. Enjolras is no poet, but he takes flowers to the graveyard on Sundays. He will as long as there are flowers to be had in Paris.

The day is hot, though off in the distance rumble clouds swollen with rain and thunder. Enjolras lays out the flowers for his friends. He cannot regret their sacrifice in the name of liberty, but he does grieve their absence in his world. Such bright lives, given to an inferno of a cause. The inferno nearly caught Enjolras, but it was the occupant of this last grave who saw the gunman at the barricade, who took the bullets meant for Enjolras and bled out in his arms.

_"Long live the republic," Grantaire said that night, and he smiled when Enjolras touched his face. "May you live to see it."_

_And Enjolras smiled through his tears, and promised, "I will."_

The graveyard is quieter than usual today; Enjolras might be the only person here. He sits next to Grantaire's grave, where the earth is still freshly dug, the grass not yet grown over it. "The rain will come soon," he says to the empty air. "I brought you something you'll like better. Better than flowers."

Enjolras pulls the bottle from his bag and tips it over. The wine soaks into the earth, and the purple smell lingers in the July heat.


End file.
